The Hermeneutics of Christological Psalmody in Paul
An Intertextual Enquiry
Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series

By re-examining the quotation of psalms in Paul, this book offers a fresh interpretation of the New Testament's reception of the Old Testament. Richard Hays's influential Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul astutely identified the rhetorical device of metalepsis, or echo, as central to the study of Pauline hermeneutics. Hays's Paul was in sympathetic dialogue with the voice of Scripture, but Matthew Scott now challenges this assumption with close readings of echoed psalms voiced by David and Christ. Paul's use of metalepsis in Romans and 2 Corinthians reveals him to be a provocative, even polemical, reader who appropriates the words of David for a Christological purpose. Scott also illustrates how Christ succeeds David as the premier psalmist in Paul and considers whether, in doing so, Christ acts as inheritor or iconoclast.

1. Metalepsis and the Christological revision of psalmody in Paul; 2. The Davidic psalmist in Romans; 3. Christological psalmody in the service of formation: Romans 15:1-6; 4. Christological cinema and the eclipse of the Davidic subject: Romans 15:9-12; 5. Metalepsis and the voice of psalmody in 2 Corinthians 4.

Matthew Scott teaches New Testament theology at the University of Otago, New Zealand, in addition to his role as an associate pastor at Dunedin City Baptist Church.